A long while yet will you keep that great mother’s grief. But it will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the...

Oh, with my pathetic, earthly, Euclidean mind, I know only that there is suffering, that none are to blame, that all things follow simply and directly from one another, that everything flows and finds its...

Brother, I’m not depressed and haven’t lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human...

A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory…. Once you’ve said ‘percentage’ there’s nothing more to worry about. If we had any other word… maybe we might feel more uneasy….

Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret.

Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.

I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play the buffoon, for you are, every one...

And no one, no one should know what passes between husband and wife if they love one another. And whatever quarrels there may be between them they ought not to call in their own mother...

Because it begins to seem to me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life, because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct...

Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love...

Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions...

I am told that the proximity of punishment arouses real repentance in the criminal and sometimes awakens a feeling of genuine remorse in the most hardened heart; I am told this is due to fear.

I worked it through with pride,I almost spoke without words, and i’m masterly at speaking without words.All my life I have spoken without words, and I have passed through whole tragedies on my own account...

Lere pastaj qe ka dhe jo pak pasunare qe s’i pelqen te degjojne ankimet me ze te larte te varfanjakeve. Se, sigurisht, i shqetesojne, i bezdisin me ankesat pa fund. Po, moj shpirt, varferia kurdohere...

But I’ve still better things about children. I’ve collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother, ‘most worthy and...

Doesn’t there, in fact, exist something that is dearer to almost every man than his own very best interests, or – not to violate logic – some best good … which is more important and...

But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go to commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you some day how I went! Did I murder...

You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless...

He could not consent to allow himself to be insulted, still less to allow himself to be treated as a rag, and, above all, to allow a thoroughly vicious man to treat him so. No...

In Russia, drunks are our kindest people. Our kindest people are also the most drunk.

No, it is not a commonplace, sir! If up to now, for example, I have been told to ‘love my neighbor,’ and I did love him, what came of it?. . . What came of...

Escute mais isso. Por outro lado, forças jovens, frescas, sucumbem em vão por falta de apoio, e isso aos milhares, e isso em toda parte! Cem, mil boas ações e iniciativas que poderiam ser implementadas...

Peaasi on elu, ainult elu – selle lakkamatu ja lõpmatu avastamine, mitte sugugi avastus ise!

Something new and unexpected, something hitherto unknown and undreamt of, had taken place in him. He did not so much understand with his mind as feel instinctively with the full force of his emotions that...

Sono proprio i piccoli particolari, di solito, a rovinare ogni cosa…

It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was...

I want to suffer so that I may love.

Noble starets, tell me, are my high spirits offensive to you or not?” Fyodor Pavlovich suddenly exclaimed, gripping the arms of his chair with both hands and appearing ready to leap out of it, depending...

The monks used to say that he was more drawn to those who were more sinful, and the greater the sinner the more he loved him.

People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.

Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man

And it has always been a mystery, and I’ve marveled a thousand times at this ability of man (and, it seems, of the Russian man above all) to cherish the highest ideal in his soul...

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we’re alive, we’re all the same once we’re dead. Just used-up shells.

Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then . . . Well, then I woke up.

You ache with it all; and the more mysterious it is, the more you ache.

I worship her, Alyosha, worship her. Only she doesn’t see it. No, she still thinks I don’t love her enough. And she tortures me, tortures me with her love. The past was nothing! In the...

Though these young men unhappily fail tounderstand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest ofall sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years oftheir seething youth to hard...

It is always so, when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated…

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is...

The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its...

And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins, you were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance...

I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who...

There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years together it will remember its injury down to...

Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one can judge a criminal, until he recognises that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and...